1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a definition execution system for operations and functions in a computer system, and particularly to a definition. execution system for operations and functions, which enables to freely define the associating between functions of an application program system and operations for executing the functions using a natural language.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional computer system which runs certain application programs, it is general that the relation between each operation for instructing the application program to execute and an function corresponding to the operation is predetermined fixedly. For example, a correspondence between an operation by inputting a command name provided by the operating system of a computer system or by selecting an icon by means of a pointing device and a function executed by the above operation is fixedly defined in the system, and a user is not allowed to change the correspondence between the operation and the function on the application program. Therefore, such a computer system requires a user to learn and get accustomed to the preprogrammed correspondence between the operation and the function.
A system enabling to expand the correspondence between operations and functions by programming has been proposed in "Visual programming system description model" by Motoji Kato, et al., (Information Processing Society of Japan, Seminar Report 91-SE-78-3). This paper discloses a method to define the associating between execution of a certain function and an operation such as pressing a button or selecting a menu by using a dedicated artificial language in a user interface management system such as window manager in multi-window environment on UNIX.
In the above system which enables to expand the correspondence between the operations and the functions by programming the artificial language, however, it is necessary to learn the dedicated artificial language and the programming language to define the correspondence. And, it has a disadvantage that a user who is not familiar with programming has difficulty in expanding the operations and the functions.